How do bloggers make money from blogs?

I’ve
been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities
that are
opening up for bloggers to make money from blogs.

I’ve
long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread
their
interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their
eggs in
one basket.

The
wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier. I thought
I’d take
a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make
money
through blogs.

Advertising Programs
- Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been
with the
addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers. The
most
common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad
program
from Google - Adsense. Another two popular ones with many is BlogAds. A
more
recent addition that many are using successfully are
Chitika’s eMiniMalls and
CrispAds, Text Link Ads.

Adgenta,
Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, Peak Click, DoubleClickTribal Fusion,
Adbrite,
Clicksor, Industry Brains, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, AVN, Pheedo,
Adknowledge,
YesAdvertising, RevenuePilotTextAds, SearchFeed, Target Point,
Bidvertiser,
Fastclick Value Click and OneMonkey (to name just some of the options -
I’m
sure I’ve forgotten some) and there is a smorgasbord of
options. Of course
there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing
and with a
variety of other advertising system currently in development (so I
hear).

RSS Advertising
- The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also.
I’m yet
to hear of any bloggers making big money through it to this point - but
as
improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m
sure we’ll start to
see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship
- In
addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to
join there
is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity
that exists
for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and
more examples of
this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my
own in
the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just
completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog.
These
are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring
sponsorship
with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it
in the year ahead.
Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some
bloggers being
paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a
regular
fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing
so.

Affiliate Programs
- There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank
and
Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the
large to
the very small.

Digital Assets
- Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital
assets to support
and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that
I’m increasingly
seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My
recent
foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course
that
Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version
of.
This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week
I’ve
seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.